Congressional impasse, financially untenable social programs, and fiscal crises are hallmarks of bureaucratic dysfunction today. Jorrit de Jong explains that bureaucratic dysfunction reflects a breach of contract between the government --not only as a provider of services, but also as a catalyst for improved social outcomes --and a public comprised of clients, professionals, managers, and policymakers. "Dealing with Dysfunction" embarks on a conceptual, theoretical, and empirical investigation to understand why bureaucratic dysfunction is a public problem and what can be done to solve it.

Jorrit employs real-world data from an independent nonprofit action research team he founded: the Kafka Brigade. Building on this research, he presents 14 case studies, from licensing an Amsterdam sandwich shop to sorting out immigrant rights, which are typical of a larger problem and applicable to a broad base of clients. Utilizing data from these case studies, "Dealing with Dysfunction" illustrates how stakeholders can enact an inclusive process for identifying, defining, diagnosing, and remedying incidences of red tape.

Further, this study highlights the failings of standard approaches to solving institutional dilemmas. Jorrit argues that effective problem solving in the public sector should adopt the following principles:

- Diagnostics for appropriately identifying and dissecting diverse types of dysfunction - Distribution of problem-solving capacities to connect institutions and individuals - Cross-organizational learning to transform accountability structures - Bottom-up incrementalism that prevails over top-down regulatory reform

"Dealing with Dysfunction" offers conceptual frameworks, theoretical insights, and practical lessons for dealing with bureaucratic dysfunction in practice. It challenges conventional approaches toward "fighting bureaucracy" and "reducing red tape" and emphasizes the importance of rigorous public problem solving for making government more effective, efficient, and equitable.

From the dawn of the twentieth century to the early 1960s, public-sector unions generally had no legal right to strike, bargain, or arbitrate, and government workers could be fired simply for joining a union. Public Workers is the first book to analyze why public-sector labor law evolved as it did, separate from and much more restrictive than private-sector labor law, and what effect this law had on public-sector unions, organized labor as a whole, and by extension all of American politics. Joseph E. Slater shows how public-sector unions survived, represented their members, and set the stage for the most remarkable growth of worker organization in American history. Slater examines the battles of public-sector unions in the workplace, courts, and political arena, from the infamous Boston police strike of 1919, to teachers in Seattle fighting a yellow-dog rule, to the BSEIU in the 1930s representing public-sector janitors, to the fate of the powerful Transit Workers Union after New York City purchased the subways, to the long struggle by AFSCME that produced the nation's first public-sector labor law in Wisconsin in 1959. Slater introduces readers to a determined and often-ignored segment of the union movement and expands our knowledge of working men and women, the institutions they formed, and the organizational obstacles they faced.

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Griffiths, Kippin and Stoker bring together many of the country's leading academic and policy experts to explore the long-term challenges facing public services, and ask what the role of government, citizens and society should be in addressing them. The book sets out a new reform agenda, exploring possibilities for the future design and delivery of public services in the UK and beyond. Public Services: A New Reform Agenda is an important new contribution to the debate that will be invaluable for policymakers, practitioners and academics.

Human Resource Management in Government: A South African Perspective On Theories, Politics And Processes explores the many facets of the employment relationship within government institutions.

These activities include strategic employment processes, such as talent management, trade union interactions, compensation, human resource governance (metrics) and the future of human resource management.

This book is a comprehensive overview of oversight conducted over the past decade to measure how well DHS is achieving its mission, operating its programs, spending taxpayer funds, complying with the law, and respecting the boundaries established to limit the federal government and protect the rights of law abiding U.S. citizens. This book describes and analyzes the discretionary appropriations for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for fiscal year 2015 (FY2015). It compares the President's request for FY2015 funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the enacted FY2014 appropriations for DHS, and the House-reported homeland security appropriations legislation for FY2015. The book tracks legislative action and congressional issues related to DHS appropriations with particular attention paid to discretionary funding amounts.

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. The Trojan Horse traces the growth of commercial sponsorship in the public sphere since the 1960s, its growing importance for the arts since 1980 and its spread into areas such as education and health. The authors' central argument is that the image of sponsorship as corporate benevolence has served to routinize and legitimate the presence of commerce within the public sector. The central metaphor is of such sponsorship as a Trojan Horse helping to facilitate the hollowing out of the public sector by private agencies and private finance. The authors place the study in the context of the more general colonization of the state by private capital and the challenge posed to the dominance of neo-liberal economics by the recent global financial crisis. After considering the passage from patronage to sponsorship and outlining the context of the post-war public sector since 1945, it analyses sponsorship in relation to Thatcherism, enterprise culture and the restructuring of public provision during the 1980s. It goes on to examine the New Labour years, and the ways in which sponsorship has paved the way for the increased use of private-public partnerships and private finance initiatives within the public sector in the UK.